


These Wheels Were Made for Turning (or, A Love Story Starring a Man and His Lorry)

by blue_fjords



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-03
Updated: 2012-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 13:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_fjords/pseuds/blue_fjords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title sums it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Wheels Were Made for Turning (or, A Love Story Starring a Man and His Lorry)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amand_r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/gifts).



He drives a lot. That's what you do, when you deliver things for a living. Rhys likes to think of it as spreading joy throughout the land (on good days) and resisting the urge to run wankers off the road (on bad days). Now that he's a manager, he doesn't go out as often. He sits behind his desk and talks to Gloria a lot, solves problems for his people (used to be just men, but now Doreen's joined their ranks, and he has to be careful about saying "men" – he usually goes with "you lot" now, and everyone's happy), pacifies customers when the need arises (most of their calls are "thank you" calls though, believe it or not – those have risen since they started giving out lollies, and never mind if you're not a kid), and on the rare occasion, he does get to sub in. Then it's him and the lorry and the open road, and he's the kind of guy that likes to get around, he never stays in one place, he goes from town to town.

Well. Not exactly. No matter where he travels, his faithful lorry carries him home again, always to Gwen. He picks her up trinkets from wherever he goes, even if it's just to Newport or Splott. Gwen's the owner of a set of matchbooks from every petrol station in Newport. Not everyone can say that. Rocks with unusual shapes or colors; a piece of driftwood that looks like her mum's favorite hat; a t-shirt that says 'Kidwelly: Home of Liver Crisps;' a red dragon keychain with _five_ legs – a true collector's item, that is, will be worth loads on eBay some day; a scrap of wool that matches her eyes – these and others are carefully collected and presented upon arrival. He calls it hunting, she laughs and calls it gathering, and stores most things in an unused bin in the corner of the closet.

It's long hours away from home, sitting on his arse, but there's plenty to see. He prefers getting out into the country a bit, away from the stop-and-go traffic of Cardiff. (Though there's certainly something to be said about the quality of coffee in Cardiff as opposed to coffee out towards the Brecon Beacons.) On long stretches of rolling hills, he turns up the radio and sings along.

"Brandy, you're a fine girl! What a good wife you would be!" he belts unsteadily to his audience of empty crisp packets and one dead fly. "Yeah, your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea."

He worries sometimes about Gwen getting stolen away. After all, in the song, the call of the sea was too powerful, and Brandy was just left with a locket to bear the name of the man that she loved. And that's just the sea! Gwen has the universe. Kind of. (They don't have a spaceship. Rhys has checked. In fact, he asks about that a lot. "Flown any good alien aircraft lately, love?" It's kind of a joke, only it's not.)

But then he gets home, and if Gwen's there, he can tell right away which won out for the day: Wonders of the Universe, or Horrors of the Universe. 

If it's a Wonders day, they'll laugh and squabble good-naturedly in the kitchen while getting the spag bol together, and Gwen will tell him about her day. He gets so transported by her alien stories, standing in his solid Welsh kitchen with his mouth slightly agape and stars in his eyes, that he forgets to worry if the magnificence of Out There will ever trump the mundaneness of Right Here. Listening to Gwen, he knows that if she were to answer the call of the wild some day, he'd be answering it right there beside her. 

If it's a Horrors day, he might draw her a bath and fix her a cuppa. Sometimes Gwen talks then, sometimes he does. He's never at a loss for words, not Rhys Williams, and he can spin her a tale quick as a wink. Something to remind her of the Wonderful and Weird right here, the Wild and Wonky of Earth, as seen from the window of a lorry.

He's taken to sending her pictures from his travels: a graffiti-ed STOP sign, a pair of purple sheep (spray-painted), a flower growing in an abandoned tire, a pasty bearing an uncanny resemblance to First Minister Carwyn Jones. Sometimes she replies back with pictures of alien slime and odd bits of junk from another place and time. One memorable afternoon featured an alien melody playing on his mobile, instruments indistinguishable from a voice singing in a language that had never been heard on Earth. He and the lorry sat on the side of the road while Welsh rain came pissing down all around them and the cab was filled with the gentle hum of a lullaby.

Driving the lorry gives him time to think, time he doesn't get when he's at the office being the boss-man, or when he's with Gwen, his tongue tripping over things he wants to tell her. The recycled oxygen of the cab is a nurturing environment for him to build his castles out of air: dreams for a house and a garden, kids laughing underfoot. They dissolve into the ether when he rolls down the window, breathing in the sharp tang of salt or the ripe smell of manure. So he forms new ones: Cardiff protected from the threat of alien attack, Gwen home safe each night. None of these things are unattainable, he firmly believes, not even the ones that never seem to survive leaving the lorry.

He supposes he's a hopeless optimist. If he wasn't, he'd never be able to live up to his 'Rhys the Rant' moniker. What would be the point, eh? He only complains about things because he knows they could be better. The lorry agrees with him, shifting gears to climb a hill. "I think I can, I think I can," it chugs, and Rhys gives the dashboard a reassuring pat.

Some day he'll take Gwen with him on one of his routes, show her the beauty of this land she's protecting. They'll sing along to the radio, and eat crisps, and swap stories, and argue, and maybe get lost. But it will turn out all right in the end, the trusty lorry getting them home safe. Until then, he'll drive solo, steering towards home and letting the lorry pick the music.

" _Highway runs into the midnight sun, wheels go round and round. You're on my mind…_ "

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in August of 2010 for the bodacious amand_r.


End file.
